Musings of a technophile

I recently played this game from EA that was called “Mirror’s Edge” which, like Portal did last year, brings a different type of game play to light. The game is actually based on Parkour, which is basically a way to move from one place to another using more efficient means, instead of the normal path. For example – let’s say you need to get down two flight of stairs, that follows the normal U pattern. While the normal movement would be to just go down the stairs, a traceur (a person that practices parkour) might just jump over the railing to the other half of the U down below. It really is an interesting idea, and after watching some videos of people doing this for real on YouTube, I must say that some of these guys can really get around fast!

Anyways, in Mirror’s Edge, you assume the role of Faith, who is a “runner”. The government in Faith’s world has become Totalitarian through force, and therefore there are many people locked up for wanting to have freedom. As a “runner”, your job is to basically be a mailman for these people, taking documents to other people that would normally be confiscated by the government. The game quickly takes a twist though, as Faith’s learns about gunfire being shot at the soon-to-be Mayors office, and upon arriving finds her sister, who has just been framed for the murder of the would be Mayor. The rest of the game basically involves trying to uncover who framed Faiths’ sister Kate and running from the police. Yes, you heard that right – this is an FPS where the object is to RUN from enemies, not fight them.

Most of the game takes place in either abandoned buildings or rooftops – the apparent domain of the runners. Here you jump from roof to roof using a variety of moves such as running fast and then jumping up and running on the wall for a limited time, climbing pipes to roofs, or sliding down ropes. The game can get moving VERY fast sometimes, where you basically have to run and play based on instinct instead of thinking the puzzles through, else the cops get you. You can fight with the police using a variety of moves such as a jump kick or punches, or just simply disarm them with a quick martial arts move; the problem is that you can normally die from just a few shots, so avoiding the enemy is better if you can.

I must say I really enjoyed this game. Not only did the game feature great graphics (it uses the UT 3 engine), but the game play was nothing but fun. It is so nice to have a fresh game like this, where the game play is something different from every other FPS out there. When you run, your head bobs like you are running, and you can almost always see your feet and hands striding along with you (instead of the normal view without any body view of most, if not all first person games); this really makes Faith seem realistic. The music is awesome too, and I already found myself listening to the games OST for hours. I will admit though, that this game may not be for everyone. While I thought the puzzles and style of game play, my friends just stated “all you are doing is running, what’s so great about that?”. The ‘great thing’ is how you are running, and how fast you have to do it.

Apparently EA is already making of ME 2 and 3, making the game into a series for a trilogy – I can’t wait for the next game personally. There are a few things I would change though. For one – I found the fighting aspect of the game to be extremely annoying. I mean here is a game that is basically about figuring out puzzles and how to move around things, and the fighting just seems like somebody HAD to throw some good old FPS action in there just because you have a first person view. On a good note, having cops shooting at your or something is not bad, because it makes you run through the levels really fast, which adds to the excitement. The thing I think they need to change is like – how you get through a level while bypassing the snipers, instead of having to take them on in order to get through the level. As we saw with Portal, you can have an enjoyable first person game, without ever needing to fight something.

The other thing I would change is the runner vision. How the game basically works is that anything you can interact with – be it a platform to jump from, a rope to slide down, or a elevator button to push – they all turn red when you get within viewing range of them. The problem with this is that the game is basically a puzzle game, and the game is telling you how to solve the puzzle instead of letting you figure out how to get from point A to point B. In hard mode the runner vision is turned off, but A) you already know where everything is because you have to beat the game once in order to enable hard mode, and the runner vision applies to other game modes and B) sometimes, you do need it. Perhaps it would be best to have some sort of system where if you get stuck for x amount of time, or you keep dying, the runner vision would either become active, or ask you if you want to turn it on. They could even make it a setting in the controls panel to set the timer or something.

In any case, this was a great game for me, and if you like puzzles or you are just looking for a different type of game play, I suggest you check this game out. You can also get Mirror’s Edge on Steam, so that is nice. Below is the trailer so that you can see the graphics and the general game play.